Bilingual? Tarjimly lets you help a refugee or aid worker right now

All over the world&comma; language barriers are limiting the ability of refugees and immigrants to seek help&comma; and aid workers to provide it&period; Tarjimly is a new service that connects people who speak one language but need to speak in another&comma; with a person who speaks both — in just a couple minutes&period; They’re part of Y Combinator’s latest batch and are now officially launched after a year building the product&period;

The company’s co-founders&comma; Aziz Alghunaim and Atif Javed&comma; told me how the company emerged from a side project built while they worked at Palantir and Oracle&comma; respectively&period; It was a year ago&comma; when the tide of refugees streaming out of the Middle East was growing&period;

“We wanted to do something to help refugees at scale&comma; and decided to use our engineering experience&comma;” said Javed&period; “We actually announced the first early version of the product during the first Muslim ban a year ago — we got a great response because people were happy to have another way to help other than give money or send emails&period;”

“We signed up like 1&comma;500 people in two days&comma;” added Alghunaim&period; “We decided to build a tech nonprofit to solve this problem&comma; and quit in January&period;”

The basic problem is simply that there aren’t enough translators to go around&comma; and the work they do can’t be delayed by the days or weeks it might take to find one&semi; sometimes&comma; as in cases where there’s imminent danger or critical logistical issues&comma; it can’t be delayed by even an hour&period;

“Interpreters are a scarce resource and extremely expensive&comma;” Alghunaim said&period; Even for more commonly spoken languages like Spanish and German&comma; they can run &dollar;80 per hour&period; “But then say you’ve got a family from Iraq right in front of you&comma; and they speak Kurdish&period; your pool of resources is extremely limited&period; And then there’s even Kurmanji Kurdish&comma; and Sorani Kurdish&comma; all these dialects&period;”

You can’t stock every aid site or headquarters with dozens of interpreters&comma; some of whom may only work a few hours a week&period; And relying on the local community &lpar;which some aid workers do&rpar; isn’t a good option either&comma; since the populations are by definition the ones who need help&comma; and anyway may not be around for long&period; That’s where Tarjimly comes in&period;

Quick turnaround translations

Right now Tarjimly is only on Facebook Messenger&comma; but an independent&comma; multi-platform app is on the way that will allow cross-platform chats&comma; between Messenger or WhatsApp and SMS for instance&period; Using the chat interface&comma; an aid provider or refugee indicates their own language and the language of the person with whom they need to speak&period;

Tarjimly scours its database of volunteers and using a bit of machine learning &lpar;naturally&rpar; it finds the users most likely to respond quickly&period; When it finds one&comma; it connects the two through the chat interface&semi; to make things easy and anonymous&comma; the messages are relayed through Tarjimly’s servers&comma; which both obscure the users’ IDs and allow cross-platform chats&period;

On the right&comma; the requesting user’s screen &lpar;in Arabic&rpar;&comma; and on the left&comma; the volunteer’s screen&period;

Once connected&comma; the user can enter text or send voice messages&semi; the volunteer just translates them and sends them back for the user to share with their interlocutor how they please&period; Audio and video chat can be requested&comma; and documents and images can also be sent to the translators in case a quick consultation is necessary before signing something or waiting in a line&period;

The idea isn’t to guide people through major processes like immigration — dedicated interpreters are still needed for long interviews&comma; technical language and so on — but to handle time-sensitive matters like distribution of food and water or explaining an event or injury&period;

“We’re focused on the real-time piece&comma;” said Alghunaim&period; “We want to bridge that gap between the refugee and the service provider&period;”

“Refugees are constantly interacting with aid workers&comma;” said Javed&period; “These people need this all time — like literally every single aid worker needs this every day on the ground&period;”

Right now the service finds a match in an average of 90 seconds&comma; and these acts of “micro-volunteering” usually only last a few minutes&period; 16 languages are currently supported &lpar;plus dialect variations&rpar;&comma; with a focus on those spoken by major refugee populations&colon; English&comma; Arabic&comma; Persian&comma; Pashto&comma; urdu&comma; Spanish&comma; French&comma; Greek&comma; Italian&comma; Bengali&comma; Turkish&comma; Somali&comma; German&comma; Portuguese&comma; Kurdish&comma; and Burmese&period;

The over 2&comma;500 translators on the service have already helped over 1&comma;000 refugees in the time leading up to launch&period;

&lpar;Wondering whether machine translation has a role here&quest; The truth is it’s just not good enough in many cases&period; The co-founders worked and studied in this space during their time at MIT and their previous jobs&comma; and are confident that it’s not ready for an application like this&comma; either in its capabilities or its state of deployment&period; “Language understanding is still very very early stage&comma;” Alghunaim said&period;&rpar;

As for the possibility of bad translations&comma; perhaps even intentional ones&comma; Tarjimly does let users rate their experience&comma; but Javed noted in a follow-up email that “We’re cultivating a strong community on FB where translators share feedback&comma; ideas&comma; and call out bad actors&period; One easy solution we have in mind is to use translators to QA each other&period;” But it hasn’t been a problem so far&comma; he added&period;

Free where it matters

Tarjimly’s position as a nonprofit is a deliberate one&semi; the company aims to fund the service through grants and donations in order to keep it free for refugees — a population that&comma; while sizable and motivated&comma; isn’t exactly ethical to monetize directly&period;

“We’re going to start off with a grant based model&comma; but we want to create something that’s sustainable&comma;” said Javed&period; “If we end up making a product that NGOs and governments are using&comma; I have no doubt that if we go to them and say&comma; ‘look&comma; we want to keep this going&comma;’ they’ll help&period;”

They consider the service’s ability to scale quickly for low cost a major asset&period;

“When you ask for grant money&comma; the first thing they ask about is your efficiency — cost versus impact&period; And we kill at that&comma;” explained Alghunaim&period; “We create an impact that’s extremely low cost and scales exponentially in good created&period; Not everyone can do that much through technology&period;”

“We want to approach this the same way a Silicon Valley company would approach building a product — very user first&comma;” added Javed&period; “Of course we want to form partnerships and so on&comma; but we want to get this in the hands of millions of refugees tomorrow&period;”

Taking part in Y Combinator should help there&semi; both founders were enthusiastic about the resources and feedback they’d already received from the accelerator&period;

The next step&comma; apart from getting the service out there to attract more users and volunteers&comma; is to continue working with aid organizations and people on the ground&period; The team has already spent a good deal of time on this side of things but will soon depart for a two-week trip to Greece to chat with and observe refugees and aid workers there&period;

Millions of people could use something like this&comma; so let’s hope it catches on&period; If you speak multiple languages&comma; consider signing up as a volunteer&semi; a few minutes of your time could make a serious difference to someone in need of immediate help&period;